


Pretty Woman

by dorothy_notgale and Tromperie (dorothy_notgale)



Series: To Die as Lovers May [5]
Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 17:37:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7854658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorothy_notgale/pseuds/dorothy_notgale%20and%20Tromperie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following her encounter with Louisa, Danny is invited to meet privately with Armida's maker. Things go precisely according to plan--though not Danny's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pretty Woman

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, this fic contains disturbing and potentially triggering content, description of which could spoil the events. Skip to the end note for more specifics.

It had been a week and a half, but Danny still had the taste of Louisa on her lips. In her head. And Armida didn't know; she couldn't reach into Danny's soul anymore to pluck out what she'd done or thought, or who it had been with.

And they didn't--they didn't make love anymore, like they had when she lived or when she was newly dead. No teeth at her neck, no mind devouring her own.

She didn't miss that mental domination, not with how Armida had used it to twist her around. But it had felt almost weird being with a woman of her own volition, rather than some spectacle of Armida's devising. Being with just  _ one _ woman.

One gorgeous, perfect,  _ sexy _ woman that Danny had  _ wanted _ for so long--

She couldn't tell Armida, tiny destroyer that she was, but how could she hide it if it happened again? If it mattered, and it must, because it was  _ Louisa _ ? So the secret hid in her throat, trapped, as she came and went every night waiting for some sign. She hadn't thought it would be Armida to break their stalemate.

"I want you to accompany me tonight." The redhead said as soon as Danny walked into the room, like she knew it was her only chance. 

And the hell of it was, she was right. Danny was already forming an excuse, though it was too soon to return to that dilapidated little shack. "Sorry, Boss, I can't,” she said, refusal foreign in her mouth. “I've got--"

"Maria's been wanting to meet you. Properly."  Meaning not when some crazy ancient bastard was trying to kill them all. Not when Danny had spent most of the night unconscious, the lowest of the low and made well aware of it.

(She’d been in good company there, at least.)

"Get dressed," Armida ordered, like it was the old days. Like she had any say. Her fingertips drummed on the armrest of her high-backed chair, and...

Danny looked at her as if for the first time. She'd gotten so used to Armida stealing her clothes that she couldn't remember not seeing the little ancient in faded band tees and baggy ripped jeans. But tonight she wore frothy white lace, the skirt barely longer than her thighs. She looked like a doily. No. A doll, with her red painted lips and patent leather shoes. (A crime in progress. Past.)

Danny shoved her hands into her pockets. "Not the whole night, okay? I'm hungry. And I'm wearing this," she added hurriedly.

"I would never force you to go hungry, Danny." Armida blinked up through lashes coated in mascara, eyes lined in demure brown pencil and enhanced with just enough fawn shadow to make them seem even more naturally enormous and hollowed. "The pleasure you take in your kills is important; denying you that would be...unhealthy." Her face went vacant, calm, the way it did when she was lost in a memory she would never be able to explain.

"And I can wear this?" Danny twisted the hem of her tee between her fingers, feeling the small pockmark where Armida had already worn through it, twin to those caused by dropped cigarettes when Danny still smoked.

"Your clothing is your affair." Armida rose and tugged on tiny white lace gloves, fingerless to display her painted nails, and picked up a little clutch purse containing God only knew what. "But do come, my love, and meet one dear to me. The others you already know."

There were pearls at her throat, above the little Peter Pan collar, and Danny averted her gaze from those long gangly legs, those slim gymnast hips, as she followed her out to the car that had been 'sent for' them. (Armida didn't drive--Danny refused to teach her the skills to operate a several-ton hunk of metal, though it hadn't stopped Armida from learning how to repair one.)

It never failed to astound her, the way they passed unnoticed through the world. She must have been as oblivious herself, with all her nights walking in a stupor down dark alleys. But it seemed impossible that the man behind the wheel might not think this strange--a slip of a girl and a vagrant filling opposite corners of the lavish vehicle. Armida always used to sit close to her when they traveled, uncaring of eyes and hoping for questions. The space between them now, Danny’s maker across from her and not pressed against her side, was an acute pain. 

She was suddenly certain that she’d been found out. That this was punishment, not to be confronted but slowly left to the cold disinterest of those irresistible amber eyes, and-- 

She shook herself as the car came to a halt. It was impossible. No one knew but herself and Louisa. No one else needed to. (Not yet.)

If the penthouse where Armida had made her home was lavish, this hotel was palatial. Danny could see herself in the gilt-flourished marble as they walked across the entrance, could count the millions spent on each floor they passed in the elevator. The top floor. It was always the top.

Candles lit the suite, so many it as to be nearly painful for Danny's changed immortal eyes. She'd been myopic in life; just getting to 20/20 would have been a revelation, but the way the light gleamed and refracted from glass; crystal; mirrors and brass fixtures and satin-polished wood; struck her deep.

(Louisa's home was a feast for the senses in other ways--primitive and alive as the sterile confines of a hotel never were. Scents of loam and animals, sounds of insects. Moonlight in silver competing with the fire's gold, and Danny stomped on those thoughts before they could go any further in the presence of Maria-pronounced-like-Carey.)

Maria was--there were words for her type. 'Imposing.' 'Handsome.' Tall and spare, with unbound white-blonde hair spilling down the back of her red velvet blazer, not a strand out of place. She smiled graciously with thin lips, and waved them over to the sitting area.

"So good to see you again, Armida; Danielle."

That last was appended, parenthetical, and it took two tries to get the reply out: "Danny, ma'am. Not--my mother was the only one to call me Danielle." She shoved her hands into the pockets of her denim jacket, shuffled her feet as Maria's brow rose.

"I see."

"Danny wishes to separate herself from her past," Armida provided, speaking with that clinical tone: the blunt reporting Danny had once mistaken for coldness. 

Maria was appraising her, giving such a shameless once-over that Danny was surprised she wasn't asked to spin. "So this is your gift from the modern world." Maria smiled at last, but not for her. Danny, it was quickly becoming clear, was a prop. But still Maria pretended to speak to and not at her. "You must have some hidden power, to tempt my Armida after so many years."

"They call it persistence." Danny shrugged, trying for a smile. Trying for ease, when she felt fear for the first time since Akasha's rampage. 

"And this love affair has kept my girl from me, I take it." Whoops, failed another answer--Maria's eyes were fully trained on Armida and...

Danny had never seen her maker refuse to meet a challenge before (if in her own, underhanded way). But now hypnotic eyes demurred, fingers fidgeting with the hem of that ridiculous dress. "I didn't wish to see you. Any more than you felt the need to call on me."

"I have always wanted to see you, my Amanda. Seeing you is one of the great luxuries of my eternity, and one long denied by circumstance." Maria's hand on Armida's cheek was anything but motherly, while using a name no other would dare. It moved surely, mapping the features she'd apparently chosen and preserved solely for that pleasure.

(Louisa and Armida: two beauties, plucked, turned and kept like pressed flowers between the pages of their makers' books. Chosen for reasons at once arbitrary and utterly understandable to Danny. She didn't like what that might say about her.)

Armida allowed it, of course; she'd always been disturbingly habituated to touch, accommodating even when that ultimately meant redirecting said touch onto another, more 'human' body.

(Knowing what she did now, Danny wondered if Armida had been aware, and just fucking with her. Fucking literally.)

Maria's pale eyes on Danny made her feel--that way. Like she was again Armida's slave, there to fulfill  _ needs _ .

"But you speak in the past tense. What changed, to bring an end to your cruel disinterest?"

"There are few of us now." Armida didn't lean away from that cold hand, nor toward it. She was still as only vampires could be. "There may be other threats."

"You seek an ally." Maria tipped her pointed chin up,  looking her over like a dog for show. "Santino taught you such coldness. But I wonder..." Her pale eyes were on Danny now, and a hint of invasion came with it. "Is that all?" 

"Danny is young. Vulnerable." 

"Don't oversell me or anything," Danny found herself saying, prickly and uneasy. Was she being sold? Did Armida know after all? A flash across Maria's eyes, icy, and she stiffened.

But rather than making an issue of it, Maria simply grasped Danny's shoulders and drew her close. "Oh child," she said, smiling, near-imperceptible crows' feet and frown lines flexing in smooth, sheened vampire skin, "You needn't worry on that account. You are beloved of my beloved; no need to fret over proving yourself." Kissed, full on the mouth; she forced herself not to dart out her tongue for the hint of blood she could sense left there. Maria's arms were stony and implacable, Armida's eyes flat and unworried, as Danny was drawn deeper into the chambers.

"I've taken the liberty of purchasing you both gifts. Amanda received hers early, of course, when I extended the invitation, but you are so new to me--it seemed only proper to offer it in person."

A velvet jewel case, atop a garment bag, sat on a low glass-topped coffee table flanked by plush couches.

Danny wanted to refuse, but she'd seen her reflection on the way up, and her struggles to maintain that punkish appearance in pure defiance of Armida's tastes seemed...petty, now.

Rude.

"Thanks," she mumbled, stiff in her own skin. Tamed by one kiss after a decade of railing against Armida's guiding hand. She opened the box to find a set of pearls that matched those ringing her maker's neck, white and flawless enough to make Donna Reid jealous. 

The bag she held to her chest. "Do you have a spare room, or?"

"Are you shy at last?"  Armida teased, lounging across an overstuffed armchair. White on white on white. Danny knew what she was thinking of: the faceless strangers and anonymous hands. She should've made more bank than a porn star, with all the beds she’d been in, all the time she’d spent being stared at. 

(God, she'd thought it would be different now. It was, but in all the wrong ways. The same cold demands and none of the intoxicating closeness.)

"Amanda." Maria's hand (always present, even when it wasn't) on her fledgling's shoulder was too late to stop Danny's foolishness, the ruined sleeveless cotton she hurled at Armida's perfectly made face. Gawky and hairy and with one breast slightly larger than the other--a scar on her knees and one on her arm, forever. Performance art: "Mistake." 

"This'll be fine," she told Maria with her eyes still on Armida, drawing the dress out of the bag (of course it was, couldn't be anything but).

She wasn't wearing panties under her torn jeans, was just what she'd  _ been _ in the months and years before her death and what came after. But boxers wouldn't work under the fucking dress, she could see that already. Sleek and slinky and runway-quality, tailored to a body with more hip and tit than hers, one with smooth legs and shaved pits and no piercings to show through the should-be-tight sheened dusky lavender fabric. Demure color, clashing for sure with the vivid purple in her asymmetrical hair.

Fucking heels, silver strappy red-soled nail-thin stiletto things half a size too small for her feet.

The dress was inches short on her long frame, and she stared into Armida's eyes while putting the shoes on by feel to avoid thinking about how she was probably flashing her a deep look at pussy the little witch had always been too good to touch.

Fucking Sharon Stone shit, if she moved.

Her mother'd sworn she'd end up as a whore if she ran away. Swore girls like that died on the streets, God-rest-their-souls-Danielle.

She’d always hated proving the bitch right.

"Lovely," Maria said when she'd finished, in the same way that her mother had said "well," hands clasping together at her failure of a daughter. The one who should've died. 

"Yes." And God damn her, Armida didn't look mocking. Her eyes were intent, fingers on her lower lip smudging the perfectly applied red. Danny remembered, dimly, that she'd been showered with gifts like this while she was alive. Another thing that had stopped with her death. With her rages, when she'd thrown a whole wardrobe that could've bought a house out the window. 

She presented herself for inspection out of some perverse obligation, once more the disaster. "Are we going somewhere?" For all their talk of secrecy, nobody preened through their death like the vampires she'd met. And what else could these gifts mean?

"I hadn't planned on it," Maria smiled. "After all these years, I would hate to spoil such good company." 

Put it all on just to take it off. Julia Roberts should offer her box office royalties. She tried to sit straight on the edge of the couch, knees together. Every attempt at class just made for further parody of what she wasn't. "You really came from Rome?" Curiosity overcame her, in spite of herself. "They let you--" and what could she say?  _ They treated you like a human? Like the puppetmaster you've become over us? _

Superior tilt to Maria's head, her pink frosted smile. "The measure of a woman is never in what men  _ let _ her do. But then, you know that well enough, don't you?"

They should be drinking. There should be wine, later whiskey, to dull the edge of it all. (Whiskey had turned to pills had turned to smack had turned to fatalism, when her veins--the sexiest parts of her--started to collapse under abuse and low blood pressure and creeping disease). Armida should be reassuring her, encouraging her; the silence usually came later, after Danny was in bed with whatever nameless doomed fuck. Armida always sat just-so in her chair, ruffled ankles crossed, perhaps a book laid facedown in her lap as she watched with queer cool intensity. Every moan and breath Danny got out of her partners was a gift to her lover, who took the worship without comment or question. They'd probably created whole new paraphilias in the women lucky enough to survive and keep most of their minds.

"I don't disagree there," Danny said. "But considering the fights we have now, and the fights women had two hundred years ago--you must've done a lot, to get all the way out to Gaul like you did, and learn all you knew."

Danny'd never been really legit; most of her work was in zines out of London, with a few pieces as a stringer on clinic bombings, protests, or punk shows threading their way through major magazines before she got too messed-up on Armida to work. But she'd listened, and learned, and talked and thought.

"More than there are words to tell. You would need a great many more tapes, I'm afraid." Shut down. And suddenly she remembered Lestat's book, the worshipful mentions of Maria who prized secrecy above all.

"There are so few of us now," she mumbled, parroting Armida's words. "Shouldn't we share our histories?"

"The past is often more painful than enlightening. I'm sure you understand, Danny." Enunciation. Caught on her own snare. "Isn't that why my Amanda chose you? To leave the past behind?" 

That, and no more, it seemed. The distance between them seemed increasingly impossible to bridge, a hundred miles in the span of the feet they sat from each other. 

"Guess old habits die hard," she shrugged. "If you wanted to tell it..."

"Perhaps another time." Final. "Surely this won't be our last meeting, will it? I think my paintings would speak louder than any simple summary." 

Danny got up, sure she was being crushed under the wordless tension in the room. Broken by the manners, the hospitality she'd never learned. The lack of a dinner, a meal, a mind-obliterating substance to impart ritual.

"Just tell me what you want," she said. If this was old times, then Armida had old responsibilities.

Armida's gaze slid between the two of them, back and forth, and she didn't look thrilled. The smearing at her lips made them more alluringly bloody than the lipstick alone would have, and they parted to show the tip of her pink tongue over straight teeth, fangs concealed.

"Danny." She stepped close, kitten heels bringing her up to 5'4", maybe; still tiny, still such a pretty little dead girl in her pretty little victim's clothes. "I told you I wouldn't make you go hungry, my lover."

Danny should have run from this, some might say--but she had, she had, until she fell at its perfect tiny feet. Was falling still, as Armida's hand closed around the back of her neck and drew her down; spectacle. Display.

She'd never done it  _ with _ Armida before.

But there Maria was, in the chair Danny refused to look at, holding the power of the gaze while Armida kissed Danny like she was beautiful, held her like she was desirable. Whispered like she was loved.

God help her, she let herself pretend. crushed that small body to her like she hadn't been allowed in months. It had felt like eternity. 

"Boss," she gasped against that clever mouth, both of them covered in red-red-red. "You're so damn beautiful. I." 

Cut off by another kiss like the word itself was dangerous. A cool hand slid up the slit of her dress to rest on her hip, proprietary like that was enough. 

It always had been, hadn't it? Was this really all they'd ever been, even when Armida stood over her dying body and said she couldn't stand to let her go? 

Armida let her head loll back, inviting, and Danny nuzzled at it, looking for that sense of connection. Warmth from the dead, what a crock. 

"You used to beg for my blood," Armida murmured, low and yet obscenely audible to all. "Why do you reject me now?" 

_ Because I'm sentimental. Because I think I'm losing you. Because I don't know how to be alone like this. Because you'll know about _ her  _ if I do, and-- _

A hand at the back of her neck turned her to stone, afraid of what it might mean. Afraid that this was the moment she'd lose her dangerous love. 

"No need to be afraid." Maria kissed her cheek, gentle, and Danny remembered reading about rabbits' hearts beating so fast they burst. "You're safe here, little one."

What was safety, to their kind? The promise that they'd keep on to die another night?

She shuddered and clutched Armida closer, her lifeboat in this storm, and it was no different.  _ Should be _ no different. But Armida was more present than ever, murmuring in archaic Italian as she drew down the invisible zipper at Danny's side, slipped her little cold hand inside to the small of her back to make her shiver.

Lowered her to the rug by the fire, and Danny'd been made love to by a dead fireplace, been kissed and touched and held, and it had her biting back tears.

Wouldn't want to spoil the show. Never that.

Her-- _ the _ heels snagged against the carpet as Armida laid her down; Armida's barrettes caught her fingers when she tried to stroke her hair. And that awful little-girl Easter dress mocked her, bloused over the chest and hiding everything until she reached out and  _ touched _ Armida. Audiences liked that; misbehavior meant an opportunity to see it corrected. Her maker's strength was always a surprise, rarely deployed where a well-placed whisper would do. It pinned her now, hands above her head so that it was clear she wasn't to touch. Fuck this game, the both of them, and the killer she'd fallen in love with. She opened her mouth to call it off.

The scent of blood rose in the air as Armida pressed two finely manicured nails (what was even the  _ point _ ) to her own neck, puncturing like fangs until the blood dribbled and then flowed, staining paths of red along the tatted lace. Danny could feel her veins knotting, screaming their way out to get at the very concept of food. 

_ (Maybe this was the truth of it, then, and those stolen touches were the illusion, dreamed in a witch's cottage apart from the real world.) _

Armida leaned over her, just enough to let the blood drip across her face, to turn hunger into frenzy like she was being made again - no arguments, just obedience. Knowing that as she let go Danny would be powerless to do anything but draw her close and bite, hard, the pair of them rutting on the floor like animals.

Love. All of that and her maker had the cruel gall to send love, soft and deep and endless as if Danny hadn't seen her sit a world away. As if she didn't know this was all for someone else even as she drew her leg up and over Armida's hip, desperate for contact.

She'd dreamed of Louisa as she lay dying, in that space where Armida warned her that it would change them. With the severing of the link between their minds, Armida could no longer chase, and Danny no longer ran. She'd stayed, she'd  _ stayed _ , but apparently that wasn't good enough; she no longer had the allure of escaping prey.

She'd dreamed Louisa would find her again to welcome her, and she had, but still--this.

Still she lay beneath her-- _ Maria's _ Armida, or Amanda, or whoever, posed not for her own pleasure but for the artful observation of another. Breathing, near-living pornography, frozen by the gaze she could not evade.

Why couldn't she  _ sense _ the contempt this act showed Armida felt?

After a scant mouthful, just enough to whet her appetite, Armida pulled back, the brief squeeze to Danny's wrists warning enough not to reach even when released.

She'd been young and soft, once. And then she'd been less young, and hard.

Now she was just tired. She stayed put, closing her eyes against the sounds of rustling fabric and the light jostling of her still-upraised leg.

She'd seen it all before, all Armida's 'perfection,' in midnight swims and hot baths, between silk sheets and up against pillars in Rome.

The hands came back, touching her, plucking at the pretty, rich dress she'd never in her life or death wanted.

The fabric never tore, piling on another sign that it was all farce. While Armida had a great love for fine clothes, they'd been little more than disposable obstacles in the name of getting what she wanted. Now her fingers played in the space between silk and skin, flicking over rote memories of things Danny had performed for her lifetimes ago--a rough twist of one hardened nipple, unseen and filthily suggested in the way Danny felt her back arch off the ground; a cool hand stroking the hair between her legs, rucking up the skirt and suggesting, never quite--

She'd almost cried the first time she was with Louisa, knowing what they could do and all that it meant Armida had denied her in life. It meant their little shows were more for contempt than lack of ability. She bit her lip now until it bled, shivering under touch she did/didn't want. 

"Sshh," Armida breathed against her lips, lapping at the blood. “Let me take care of you." Just like she'd always threatened. Just like she'd done for the mortal pets Louisa had described. 

Danny had been so  _ stupid. _

"I can't, Armida. Please, I don't..." she was babbling, not sure what she was asking for. Her body was on fire, hungry and horny and strung on crossed wires.

"Yes you can," Armida said, as though it was encouragement. Like Danny  _ wanted _ to do whatever it was that Armida was pushing her towards. "Of course you can, cara mia."

She closed her eyes.

Her hands moved, possibly of her own volition. Possibly not; they were so far away, as they reached out and touched Armida's hardening skin, glided with unwonted elegance over unseen breasts, down a slightly hollowed belly, out to a waist and along the curve of hips with just slightly too little meat on them, not-quite-covered pelvic bones still narrow with girlhood. Back, back, to grip round flesh and  _ squeeze _ as she'd done to so many random sluts like herself and never dreamed of doing to her beloved.

Blood welled beneath the crescents of her nails, bruises probably rose violet and making the skin more translucent, like a bone china cup incongruously used to serve wine.

And Armida--she made a  _ sound _ , high and different and  _ young _ in her throat, and rolled her hips.

Danny leaned up, maybe by choice, to kiss her in the private dark behind her eyelids.

Armida fed her, little secret trickles of blood from her tongue and her lips as they touched. Little drops that only heightened her starvation as her hands gripped harder, rose suddenly and came down on the probable bruises with a smack. 

Maybe she would've. Maybe she'd always wanted to be violent, to punish her beautiful, untouchable maker for being ever out of reach, the devil siren who'd led her happily to her death. Maybe she'd always known that cold, dead body this well, that even blinded she knew to dip her long fingers below the curve of Armida's ass and find blood there. Maybe she'd been born to it, made perfectly to worship her killer. 

Yeah. And maybe Armida still loved her. 

In the dark it was easy to concentrate on bright sparks of feeling, the high of contact as Armida's hands pushed her skirts out of the way and ground down hard against her crotch, damp and heated and exquisite agony. 

Every time she hesitated, she knew what to do. Knew where to put her hands. How to hold Armida apart and aching even when she longed to pull her close. 

"Please," she said, and didn't know who she was asking or for what.

Armida's face was buried in her shoulder, swearing so softly the breath barely became words, and it didn't stop Maria from hearing it, delivering another hard smack against the redhead’s flushed backside. Danny felt detached from the moment, from the writhing creature on top of her and the conductor kneeling beside them. Her body felt alien, her hands heavy things puppeteered with only the smallest input from her own mind. 

A chill hand parted her, sent shocks up her spine and snapped her eyes open  in time with a gasp from Armida. It was a sure touch, icy and firm as it shoved inside--not asking, just knowing, probing along soft tissue until she and Armida contracted as one. Pretty dolls.  

The feeling of Maria's fingers vanished, and oh how she longed to close her eyes again, but there was some hellish metaphor keeping her observant, making her stroke Armida's curls and watch herself through a stranger's eyes. She felt still, docile, even as she a strange, slickened thickness worked its way inside her and  _ pulsed _ .

She'd never liked anything much inside her, the handful of times Armida persuaded her to do it (with men, women, toys, whatever) aside. Then, the pleasure had come from feeling hot amber eyes on her and knowing she was being watched by her lover. Armida's pleasure had been hers.

Now, the eyes on her were the worst part: cool, calm, and calculating as Maria did  _ something _ that changed the speed of the buzzing thing, playing up and down until she hit upon something that made Danny damn well  _ convulse _ .

She banged her head against the floor before that eerie stillness stole again over her limbs, and by the time she regained her sense it was too late.

Armida, shaking just as hard, mouthed at Danny's neck, and Danny's pleasure was then  _ hers _ .

The sensation was almost painful, an overload for her already screaming nerves as the swoon mingled and fought with a building orgasm. Her throat felt raw, she realized, though she couldn't say when she'd started screaming and what kind of cries she'd made.

There was nothing to do but hold on, fingers clasped hard enough on Armida's shoulders to add yet more bruises. She could feel that familiar relentless touch on her mind, now jittery and unfocused with physical distraction as Armida siphoned her blood and her mind. 

By the time she came, she was cognizant of the word "stop" on her lips, over and over again like a prayer to some god she didn't buy into. Armida was stroking her hair, kissing the fading bruises on her neck, praising her "bravery" in words distant and nonsensical. Her own eyes looked empty, and Danny didn't know if it was the usual or something more. Didn't care. 

Her legs were jelly, her body a motionless prisoner when she saw Maria, still calm and detached, bend forward to lap the blood from between her fledgling's thighs. Armida's cries were so soft no one could have said if they were pleasure or pain, and no one asked either.

Danny was surplus now, clearly; the opening act, and she couldn't bring herself to care enough to even intercede as she slithered out from under Armida and stumbled towards the couch. It was fine-- Maria caught her 'girl' by the hip and shoulder before she could fall, tilted her like a mannequin to improve the angle.

There was blood in blonde hair, blood on the expensive clothes and priceless rug.

When Armida's eyes rolled back in her head, Danny stood and walked out on the heels, so smoothly that it probably wasn't her decision despite being  _ exactly _ what she wanted. She zipped the dress in the elevator, walked out to through the gleaming lobby where staff and guests pointedly failed to see her--expensive place, all right.

The cab she hailed (fuck the limo, fuck all of it, fuck the cash she didn't have on her) took her to the top of Louisa's drive, and it waited when she knocked.

Louisa took one look at her, and paid.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Dubious consent, Psychic Possession, Coercion, Object Penetration, Humiliation


End file.
